Damn Yankees

The cover of this week's "New Yorker" sports a drawing of a tall left hander straddling the pitching mound in Yankee Stadium. He is so tall, in fact, that his head exits totally out of frame. Even the uninitiated may realize this is a reference to Randy Johnson, the latest Moses called upon by George Steinbrenner to lead the Yankees back to the Promised Land. The joke is about his gangly height, though perhaps also a suggestion that his scowly features are better left imagined. (Let's face it, the Big Unit is what the p.c.'ers might call "facially challenged," or what Leo Rosten would call a "meeskite.")

Of course his beastliness is part of his intimidation mojo, and he stands proudly among the three Great Pitchers of this era (Clemens, Maddux). He's also one of many star elements going into this baseball season's televised opener this Sunday night. ESPN is all over this match-up, which pits the Yanks against the World Champion (gulp) Boston Red Sox, beginning New York's season in the same arena where it so ignominiously ended last October. Johnson was originally scheduled to pitch against Curt Schilling, he of the blood-stained sock, in a dream contest. But Schilling's ankle is still wobbly so he'll be replaced by, of all people, the once UberYankee David Wells, who for good measure will be wearing Babe Ruth's number #3, right there where the Curse was Reversed. One can positively OD from all the iconic (and ironic) ramifications. And you know what? I don't even feel like watching.

It's not that I'm not eagerly anticipating the return of the baseball season, which is certainly my favorite Rite of Spring. I'm gobbling up the columns and predictions, following the player moves very closely, and poring over line-up changes in advance of my Rotisserie Baseball auction next week. I just don't want to watch the Yankees. I have been trying to come to terms, literally, with my apathy to my favorite team. The term I've come to is "Hangover." After last year's shocking, appalling, despicable collapse in the LCS,--when they had the Red Sox in games 3-0 with a lead in the last of the ninth, then handed it all away--I am, to mix a metaphor, gunshy--or is it battle-scarred. Okay, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome! It reminds me of when I experienced my first major drunken binge in college. I couldn't look at alcohol for several years. The Yanks are going to have to win be back.

It is hard to expect sympathy as a Yankee supporter. We are an annoying bunch, parading our arrogant sense of entitlement unlike any other fan base. But I can't help it. I was imprinted as a child in mid-century New York City, where a Yankee championship was as much an annual rite as New Year's Eve in Times Square. It took twenty years for another mini-dynasty to emerge in the late '70s, sparked by Reggie Jackson. That was fun. But that team did not compare with the Joe Torre squad that from 1996 to 2000 won four World Series, and then participated, less successfully, in two more. Though I'm all grown up and even middle-aged, this glorious run brought me back in some emotional time warp to the reassuring days of my youth. I've been swept up, since 1996, in whatever vicarious glory my association with this bunch of overpaid athletes in pinstripes could grant me. But now that success has spoiled me, and after the Yanks have failed in four consecutive years to win the post-season tourney, I am a grumbling curmudgeon, finding fault with every new player they import.

There's a book out that details the "end of the Yankee Dynasty," purportedly the day they lost the 7th game of the 2001 series (to Randy Johnson). That's an easy historical call. My brother, also a big fan, points to a game earlier that season when Mike Mussina failed, with two strikes and two outs in the ninth, to conclude a perfect game against Boston. This would have been the third perfect game for this particular group of Yankees (the other two were by David Cone and David Wells, both of whom later joined the Red Sox), and confirmed their aura of magic. But I believe the Dynasty really came to an end last October in that horrific collapse. The stain of that defeat will linger in Yankee history forever. I still smell the stink. It's like the rank stale-beer odor of a fraternity house after a party. Gives me a headache.

Though the Yankees seem loaded this year, they are aging and have several highly-valued players who are heading over the hill, and soon. These include Bernie Williams (who's never had his career year, but sure has had a good career); Mike Mussina (never won a championship); Jorge Posada (with no reasonable back-up); Johnson himself, who has no knee cartilage; 35-year-old Mariano Rivera (the major reason for all those championships); Gary Sheffield, a trouper but 36; and of course, Jason Giambi, whose arrival in 2001 has coincided with Yankee failure, year after year, once he stopped injecting steroids into his glutes. His back-up, returnee Tino Martinez, is a nice throwback to the Good Old Days, but he's more Old than Good.

It's true they still parade some players at their peaks--Jeter, the overrated Rotisserie God Arod; and Hideki Matsui, whose intense professionalism I highly admire. But there is not as much depth, and a few injuries could bring this team down hard, like the awful Yankees of the mid-'60s. As it is, I will not invest a lot of emotion in their seasonal achievements this year, waiting again to plunge into their October adventures. If they collapse and don't make the play-offs, then I can enjoy a perfectly sane autumn; if not, then I will likely be ensnared again in the irrational need for them to win the Last Game of the Season.

I'm usually not so solipsistic that I need to quote myself, but it's fitting here to cite the first piece of personal writing I can document, a short autobiographical essay I wrote 1957 which my Dad tucked away in a stray Playbill and which I discovered (and then framed) just two years ago. The first paragraph begins "In baseball I'm not so good, But I'm smart in it." In that spirit I will venture my divisional pennant predictions for this year: Padres, Cards, Braves and wild-card Mets; Yanks (sigh), Indians, Angels and wild card...drum roll...Twins! I think the Red Sox will finish third behind the thumpers of Baltimore (at least I hope so, ha ha); and that the Mets are underrated right now, with some very good pitching to sustain them.

But this is not my last word on baseball for the year. Hardly.